Kerry-Edwards to Attack Iran?

Edwards may have committed a major gaffe in his debate with Cheney. However, everybody seems to have overlooked it. Edwards said:

"And it's important for America to confront the situation in Iran, because Iran is an enormous threat to Israel and to the Israeli people."

The Bush administration has always denied that the US attacked Iraq because Iraq was a threat to Israel. Now, however, Edwards advocates an attack on Iran solely because Iran is a threat to Israel. Do we attack other countries simply because they might be a threat to a third country?

In the first place, Iran is not a menace to Israel any more than Israel is a menace to Iran. Israel has been developing nuclear weapons for more than twenty years. Israel has a history of confrontations with its neighbors which Iran does not have. Israel is much more likely to use nuclear weapons than Iran is.

I fully agree that both candidates are a menace and are dangerous. The question is which are more dangerous.

The US and the United Nations spent ten years negotiating with Saddam Hussein. Those negotiations had not gotten anywhere and were not going to get anywhere, either.

Americans have a lot of antipathy towards Iran because of the hostage crisis which ended in 1981 and because anti-American rhetoric coming out of Iran. However, rhetoric is just rhetoric. Until 1979, Iran was the staunchest ally the US had anywhere in the world. The political upheaval in Iran caused the hostage crisis, which has cemented the anti-Iranian views of many Americans, even though that crisis ended relatively quickly and without any loss of life.

Edwards spoke openly about attacking Iran. Iran has never attacked or threatened anyone. Iran poses no threat, none what ever, to any other country. Iran has also helped America in their own way by interdicting the flow of drugs such as heroin and opium which is grown and manufactured in Afghanistan. Iran has the death penalty for drug smugglers and carries out that penalty routinely and quietly. They just kill them right away. Look at the map. Afghanistan produces 75% of the world's heroin and opium, but is land-locked. If Iran did not stop these drugs at their borders, all of Europe would be flooded with cheap heroin via the Black Sea and the Persian Gulf.

It is true that we have the fear that Bush, if given a second term, might start attacking other countries, especially Syria, Iran and North Korea. However, it is unlikely that he will attack those countries. If he was going to do that, he would have done so already. Edwards, on the other hand, virtually declared that the US will attack Iran, a peaceful country, and thus I feel that Kerry-Edwards are far more dangerous and unstable than Bush-Cheney.